On 12 February the Chaeli Sports and Recreation Club commemorated it’s 11th birthday! Though the Covid-19 pandemic severely restricted sports activities this past year, our adaptive athletes are gearing up for a more active 2021! Join us in honouring some of the CSRC’s most historical moments.

When South Africa hosted the Soccer World Cup in 2010 there was a deepening realisation in The Chaeli Campaign ranks that the practice of sports for individuals with disabilities needed expansion.

From a young age children with disabilities learn that participating in sport, even as a hobby, is difficult to pursue with facilities that do not accommodate them and practical issues like transport creating a huge challenge, particularly for wheelchair users.

Despite physical impairments all people share the fundamental need to be included in a team, have fun with friends, and enjoy some healthy competition. For people with disabilities evidence also supports that doing sports is highly beneficial. Excellent for improving mobility, circulation, pain relief, body awareness, and self-esteem, sports boosts overall physical and mental health.

The Chaeli Campaign had always run a sports programme that focused on inclusion and ability awareness and in 2010 realised inclusive sports for adaptive athletes needed its own focus, resulting in the founding of the Chaeli Sports and Recreation Club (CSRC) as a separate NPO.

The CSRC’s primary focus is inclusive sports and this organisation has become a forerunner in challenging policy and changing perceptions about inclusive sport. In February the CSRC celebrates 11 years of work and invites you to learn about how it is helping to make sports more inclusive in South Africa through its three focus codes: Cycling, Road Running and Inclusive Ballroom/Latin American dancing.

The aim is to provide opportunities for people with disabilities to enjoy sport with the bodies they have and the mission is inclusion. All forms of adaptability are encouraged in dance, road running and cycling. Inclusion is essential: promoting disabled and non-disabled individuals to enjoy sports together. Significantly, for those who require the assistance of non-disabled athletes to participate, inclusion is a precondition to gain entry.

In 2013 the cycling programme pioneered 3 of the first 4 buggy teams to participate in the Cape Town Cycle Tour. Every year the number of buggy teams grew with the Pedal Power Association coming on board to support the purchase of additional hand cycles and buggies for Chaeli riders! Today this special stand-alone category includes multiple hand cyclists, buggy teams, and inclusive tandem teams.

The CSRC opened its inclusive Ballroom and Latin American dance studio in 2011 which is still the only independent dance studio in South Africa to offer dance sport for the disabled as its core focus. With inclusion remaining central, dancers with various impairments (including people with intellectual, visual and hearing impairments and wheelchair users) enjoy dancing with one another and non-disabled dancers. Inclusion at work – hope in motion.

The CSRC successfully petitioned national dance bodies to include disability dance sports sections at provincial and national championships, still a feature today.

In 2015 four of the CSRC dancers – the only dancers from Africa – proudly represented SA at the annual Wheelchair Dancing Holland Dans Spektakel in the Netherlands. Chaeli Mycroft, Damian Michaels, Chantelle le Roux and Mukhtar Lee proudly competed and returned home with double gold in their respective categories in the amateur class!